


grief shared is grief lessened

by purearcticfire



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Member Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Please Don't Hurt Me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-28 00:01:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8422858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purearcticfire/pseuds/purearcticfire
Summary: Alexander Hamilton knows what it is to lose a mother.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Promises Our Hearts Can't Keep](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8361544) by [alittlebitoftheuniverse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittlebitoftheuniverse/pseuds/alittlebitoftheuniverse). 



Alexander Hamilton did not cry at his mother’s funeral—not that there was much of a funeral. They didn’t have the money to cover the cost of one, but some of their neighbors had pitched in and he’d scraped together enough to pay for her cremation and a small ceremony to honor her memory. He stood at the waterfront, the tide lapping at his ankles. It soaked the hems of his secondhand (more like third- or fourth-hand) slacks and seeped into the dress shoes that were in such bad shape they’d given them to him for free. The wet edges of his pants chafed. Water sloshes in his shoes, molding his socks to his feet and sticking grains of sand to his toes. Goosebumps bloomed on his forearms, exposed to the brisk sea breeze that carried with it the brine of the ocean. 

 

Soon it would carry away his mother’s ashes. She would mix with the wind and the sea, the water and the air. She’d become something more than she’d ever been while she lived. (He’d remember that later, when the hurricane ravaged his home, his mother a part of the storm that tried once more to kill him, as if to say he should have died with her the first time.) For now, the meager party behind him droned on and on about Rachel, like they’d miss her, like they cared. They didn’t care this much when we were sick, he thought, but he held his words. He held his words, knowing he’d need them someday. His words were all he had left now—he had to make them count.

 

He didn’t cry. The wind whipped icy pellets into his face that stung and droplets that splattered on his cheeks like tears. They slid into his mouth and tasted like salt. 

 

One of the women who’d helped pay for the urn waded into the waves next to him, putting a hand on his shoulder.

 

“There, there, darlin’,” she said. “You don’t gotta cry. See those stars up there?” She pointed at a cluster of them, just visible. “One of ‘em’s your momma, watchin’ over you.”

 

He bit his tongue. Copper flooded his mouth, and he couldn’t distinguish the salt of the ocean spray from the salt of his blood. He didn’t withdraw his throbbing tongue from between his teeth until the woman left.

 

There was no one watching over him—not God, not his mother, not the stars. His mother had said God would heal them, bless them. He hadn’t. Alexander surviving was not a blessing. It was a curse.

 

He didn’t cry at his mother’s funeral. She was in a much better place than him. He cried that night, alone in the room where she’d died, stripped now of the infected sheets and cloths. She was in a much better place than him.

 

Years, decades, later, he stood beside Theodosia Burr beneath the same night sky. Fresh turf squished under his loafers when he shifted his footing to crouch next to the girl. Her palms and knees were coated with soil, her skirt damp with dew. She would scrub her hands and still find crescents of grace dirt beneath her fingernails. She looked up at him, eyes glimmering, and he wondered how anyone could have thought she’d run away to anywhere else but here.

 

He’d been to too many funerals. Sometimes it felt like they’d never end, and he prayed to a God he only half-believed in that he’d die before Eliza because he’d barely made it through John’s, and he couldn’t do that again. He couldn’t talk to Theo like a war veteran though, or a veteran of tragedy. He had to talk to her like the boy who’d just lost his mother. Except…he could recall the ocean at his mother’s funeral vividly, feel the sand in his shoes and spray on his face, the fabric of his pants plastered to his legs, the heaviness of his water-logged steps as if he was there again, yet the funeral itself—

 

The woman’s words came back to him then, the words he’d dismissed in bitter grief and never thought of again.

 

He hadn’t believed them, but Theo wasn’t broken like he was.

 

He wrapped an arm around Theo’s shoulders, guided her face up to the sky. “Do you see that star, Theo? The brightest one, closer than all the others.” She nodded. “That’s your mother, Theo, watching over you.”

 

Theo sniffled, fresh tears spilling over. “If she’s watching, then she saw Dad not come to the funeral.”

 

“Is that why you’re here?” Alex asked carefully.

 

“Someone had to be here,” Theo choked out. “So she isn’t—so she isn’t alone.”

 

“So she isn’t alone, or so you’re not alone?”

 

Theo said nothing.

 

Alex swept his hand across the sky. Gently he said, “She isn’t alone. She’s got all the other stars, all the other people we’ve loved who have passed on. And as long as you carry her with you, in here,” he touched her heart, “you won’t be alone either.”

 

Theo sucked in a breath. She turned. “My father didn’t come home.” Alex felt her trembling beneath the arm he still had looped around her shoulders.

 

Alex gritted his teeth. He’d deal with Aaron tomorrow. He rose to his feet and extended his hand to Theo. “Come back to my house. Philip’s been worried. You won’t get a minute to even feel alone there.”

 

Theo took his hand. She was already so much better off than he had been.

 

Alexander didn’t cry at his own mother’s funeral, and he didn’t cry at Theo’s, but he cried when he went to turn out his son’s light that night and found them curled up together, because there was so much love here.

 

So much love.

**Author's Note:**

> come cry with me over Hamilton on tumblr at @purearcticfire


End file.
